reasonable. She was directed to go by train to the Knowle Hotel at
Sidmouth (where a suite had been engaged by telegram for Mr. and Mrs.
Nelson Smith and maid) and to have all the luggage unpacked before their
arrival.

Flung thus into intimate association with a man, almost a stranger,
Annesley had been afraid in the midst of her happiness. She felt as a
young Christian maiden, a prisoner of Nero's day, might have felt if told
she was to be flung to a lion miraculously subdued by the influence of
Christianity. Such a maiden could not have been quite sure whether the
story were true or a fable; whether the lion would destroy her with a
blow or crouch at her feet.

But Annesley's lion neither struck nor crouched. He stood by her side as
a protector. "Knight" seemed more and more appropriate as a name for
him. Though there were roughnesses and crudenesses in his manner and
choice of words, all he did and said made Annesley sure that she had been
right in her first impression. Not a cultured gentleman like Archdeacon
Smith, or Annesley's dead father, and the few men who had come near her
in early childhood before her home fell to pieces, he was a gentleman at
heart, she told herself, and in all essentials.

It struck her as beautiful and even pathetic, rather than contemptible,
that he should humbly wish to learn of her the small refinements he had
missed in the past--that mysterious past which mattered less and less to
Annesley as the present became dear and vital.

"I've knocked about a lot, all over the world," he explained in a casual
way during a talk they had had on the night of their marriage, at the
first stopping-place to which their motor brought them. "My mother died